We build castles in the clouds and call them skyscrapers — like the sky is a lottery ticket, and we’re hoping to find hidden fortunes if we just scratch off that blue glaze. Like we’re climbing brick-by-brick towards heaven, where we’re certain that bliss must be buried. Our daydreamed constructions crowd up between Cirrus and Cumulus, crammed together like jigsaw puzzles, each piece scoring a lofty line into the atmosphere.

With every tower, we court taller altitudes. But there is nothing uniquely urban about the human craving for height. We build hundred-story structures for some of the same reasons we scale mountains.

We want to elevate our humanity to something almost soaring. We want to challenge gravity. We want to reframe our smallness. It makes more sense to feel so small and insignificant when looking down from up above, seeing where we fit in amid our landscapes.

Up there, we are tiny but towering. Minuscule but mighty. We need the reassurance that one extreme does not negate the other.